The Vanishers (22 page)

“Cut him loose, Karl… Just a moment. Button up his shirt and tie his cravat first.”

I said, “We’re going somewhere?”

He stared at me as if he’d never really seen me before. The High Standard was steady in his hand.

“I should have known that where you find one clever Yankee assassin you are likely to find more!”

Well, it was about time. I’d been wondering if Joel could have lost us completely; and if not, what the hell he was waiting for.

I said, “Would I attend a family reunion without having somebody covering me, a professional like me? You know how dangerous families are, particularly this family. What’s the word from my colleague?”

“He has the women.”

Well, it was the obvious move. I said, “The good old hostage gambit.”

Olaf licked his lips, and spoke in a strained voice: “He has tortured Greta. He used her to force Astrid to speak.”

“Greta is hurt?” This was young Karl, who’d been having trouble following the English conversation. “She is badly hurt?”

“I insisted on speaking with Astrid, to confirm the situation,” Olaf said. “She says that Greta…” He hesitated.

“Tell me!”

“They are at Doktor Hasselman’s office,” Olaf said. “There was no emergency. That telephone call was a trick. The man, Helm’s associate, must have followed us all the way from Torsäter here; then he stood watch outside this building. When he saw the doctor with his bag, he guessed that he had come here to attend Astrid. He made the doctor a prisoner, took him back to his office, tied him up, and forced him to make the call. When Astrid and Greta walked in, they were also captured. The man started to question Astrid. When she refused to tell him what he wanted, he took one of the doctor’s scalpels and simply… Greta will live, she is not dangerously injured, but Astrid says there will probably be some disfigurement.”

The boy made a choking sound in his throat. He turned on me sharply and slapped my face hard. “Animals!” he gasped. “Can you wonder that we must change a world that is run by people like you and your brutal accomplices?”

His English was improving by the minute; but I couldn’t help staring at him in wonderment. As I said, they scare hell out of me. Anybody who can complain self-righteously about a little bladework, when he’s just been a willing accomplice to a hot-poker session, is operating according to a logic beyond my comprehension. But I guess the world is full of folks who are serenely convinced that anything they do is right, and anything that’s done to them is wrong.

“That is enough, Karl,” Olaf snapped. “Now free him, please.”

When the duct tape had been cut, I peeled it off my wrists and ankles, sitting there. I said, “I want my guns and my suitcase, please. And Karin Segerby.”

“You want!” Olafs voice was contemptuous. “What you want cuts no ice here, Helm. If I have the proper phrase.”

I said, “Wake up and smell the coffee, friend. If I have the proper phrase. The question now is simply, do Astrid and the girl mean more to you than I do to my pal Joel. I think they do, because Joel isn’t really my pal. He’s just a guy assigned to do a job with me; and the job comes first. He’s a fairly cold-blooded character. If things go sour—if, for instance, you shoot me with that pistol you keep waving at me—Joel will simply put bullets into the two girls and the doctor, because they’ve seen his face and he doesn’t want the Swedish cops, or you, on his trail too soon. He’ll disappear into the night and try to do my job for me.
Scratch one Helm; Operation Lysaniemi still running; signed Joel
.” I looked hard at Olaf. “If that’s the way you want it, pull the trigger. If you want it any other way, remember that Joel’s training is exactly the same as mine. He doesn’t bluff any more than I do; and he doesn’t have a skinful of dope the way I did when I had Astrid under my gun, so his marksmanship should be considerably better. If he tells you he’s going to shoot if you do something, and you do it, somebody’ll wind up dead, you can count on it.”

“If he does any more harm to the girls I will kill him!” Olaf’s voice has harsh. “I will be waiting up there in
vildmarken
when he comes. I am very good in the wilderness.”

“Joel’s a pretty good
vildmark
boy himself. Not having seen you in action, Cousin, except with the other guy taped to a chair, I wouldn’t bet on it either way. But suppose you do kill him; what’s left for you except to blow your own brains out and make a clean sweep, dead bodies all over the lousy place. Just because you got trigger-happy here without thinking it through. Why not deal?”

“What deal do you suggest?”

“Two for two. You want your Astrid. Young Galahad here wants his Greta. I want my me. And I want Karin Segerby. I won’t hurt her. I’ve been imported to keep her from being hurt, among other things, remember?”

“What will you do with her?”

“Hell, I don’t know, yet. But I’m supposed to get her away from the bad company she’s been keeping, for the family’s sake; I might as well start doing my chores…”

Watching him, I couldn’t really believe it was happening. I mean, the man obviously considered himself a tough professional, one of us, yet from his expression I gathered that he was actually beginning to consider the bargain I’d offered him. He was contemplating giving up a dangerous prisoner, a serious threat to his plans, one he’d gone to considerable trouble to capture, for the sake of a pretty blonde lady with big brown eyes. How sentimental could you get? Well, maybe I was being too hard on him; maybe I was too strongly influenced by my own tough indoctrination. We are trained not to play the hostage game under any circumstances unless…

My thoughts stopped right there. I’d forgotten the kicker:
unless the hostage is of extreme value to the operation, essential, the very heart of the mission.
I looked at Olaf’s long Norse face again, so like my own in many ways, although I hated to admit it. This was not the face of a man who, with a big assignment in the balance, would get mushy about a woman, even a woman who’d meant something to him once and perhaps still did. He’d know the world is full of women, and hearts don’t break so easily, at least not the vulcanized organs that pump life through men like him, and me. If he was willing to make a deal for Astrid under these conditions, it meant that I was going to revise my estimate of her importance drastically. She was more than just a stray dame he’d called on for help because she happened to be on the proper side of the Atlantic and was willing to do him a favor for old times’ sake.

“Very well,” he said. “You have your deal. And you will get your belongings back when the two women are safe.”

“And Karin?”

“I will speak with her. She is free to go with you if she wishes, but I will not force her.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s put the show on the road. Another Yankeeism for you, Cousin.”

Karl drove the Mercedes with Karin sitting up front beside him; Olaf and I occupied the rear seat. It was getting close to midnight, and there wasn’t much traffic. For a big city, Stockholm pulls in its sidewalks early. Olaf’s directions to our young chauffeur, who was apparently imported talent and didn’t know the neighborhood, soon brought us to a newish two-story medical building called Vasakliniken, only half a dozen blocks from the apartment.

The Vasa Clinic—they do love to run two or more words together—was presumably named for Gustav Vasa, the ancient monarch who holds just about the same Father-of-His-Country spot in Sweden that George Washington does in the U.S., having earned it by creating a unified country out of a bunch of squabbling minor kingdoms.

I’d been cleaned up, more or less, and given another big Stjernhjelm overcoat to cover my stained seersucker jacket, so we aroused no interest as we marched through the lobby after parking in the lot outside that was almost empty at this late hour; but I’d noted my red rental VW-Ford standing there. Following orders, I led the way with Olaf close behind, hand in pocket. After him came Karin Segerby, with Karl walking beside her carrying my suitcase. I’d noted when we left the apartment that Astrid’s suitcase had no longer been in the hall; presumably she’d taken it with her so she could change into a less beat-up costume after treatment. An elevator took us to the second floor.

“To the right,” Olaf directed me. “Now, the third door on the right. Open it. Remember, any tricks from you or your friend, and I will make certain of you, no matter who else dies for it.”

I didn’t really believe him. At least I thought that, with Astrid’s important life probably at stake—and I’d better find out fast just what made her so important—he’d hesitate to start the shooting; but I reminded myself that he was no Karin Segerby, unaccustomed to guns and afraid of them. He was my brand of Stjernhjelm, the mean kind, and he might have in him enough of the old, suicidal, charge-to-a-glorious-death berserker blood to set off a massacre if directly challenged in this awkward situation.

In military terms I believe it’s called a disengagement, and it’s always a problem. You’ve met the enemy and fought him to a standstill, or vice versa. Now you don’t want to fight him anymore under these no-win conditions, and he feels the same way; but how do you break contact without giving either side an advantage that can be exploited by a sudden sneak play?

“Just take it easy, Cousin,” I said. “Let’s not decimate our family tonight; think of all the generations of Stjernhjelms that fought and loved so hard to make us.”

“And enjoyed every minute of it… Open the door.”

I opened it. The tableau inside was intriguing. It was a shiny little medical waiting room that any American patient would have felt at home in; but Joel’s three prisoners were seated stiffly, like the three monkeys, facing the door on three straight chairs set in front of the receptionist’s counter. Joel wasn’t visible.

I had a moment in which to note that Dr. Hasselman, a plump, balding man in a dark suit, seemed to be scared and angry but unhurt. Astrid, in the middle, looked as I’d last seen her, except that she had some kind of trench coat wrapped around her and her expression was a bit more haggard due, presumably, to the continuing pain of her wound. The dark girl, Greta, had joined the night’s casualties, holding a large, bloody wad of gauze to her left cheek; there was blood on her clothes as well. Hemoglobin was the color of the day, or night. Greta’s hair was wildly disordered, as if somebody had used it to yank her head around the way he wanted it. She’d lost her big spectacles, and her naked eyes were wide and shocked. It was not a good evening for attractive ladies. If my chest hadn’t been giving me hell in spite of the anesthetic ointment, I might have been ashamed of Joel and myself for being so unchivalrous.

Joel’s voice spoke from the corner to the left, out of our range of vision: “Come inside slowly.”

Behind me, Olaf said, “Show yourself, first. I should mention that I have a weapon aimed at Mr. Helm’s spine.”

Joel’s voice said, “Helm gives me my orders, not you. But you’d better keep in mind that, whatever happens, I’ll have a bead on the pretty lady in the middle. You can blast me with a .458 Magnum elephant rifle, and I’ll still get her as I go down.”

Deadlock. There was a little silence. No traffic sounds reached us from outside the building; and nobody came down the corridor inside it. Up here on the second floor, we seemed to have Vasakliniken, all of Stockholm, to ourselves.

I said sharply, “To hell with this. Let’s cut out this hair-trigger stuff before somebody else gets hurt, Cousin Olaf; we’ve shed enough blood for one night. What do you say?”

His voice was expressionless: “What do you suggest? That we trust each other? That would truly be a new departure. Tell me how you would like us to implement this revolutionary concept.”

“First, young Karl,” I said. “I’m willing to trust you up to a point, but I’m not willing to trust an untrained boy who thinks he has a grievance. Let’s get him out front, where we can all keep an eye on him. Ask him to leave Karin and the suitcase in the hall and slide past us and walk over to stand by his girl. I’ll accept your assurance that, if he’s armed, he won’t blow his stack in some stupid way if he sees a chance. Okay so far?”

“It is okay. Karl, you heard. Walk over there and behave yourself.”

The boy made his way past the two of us. We watched him cross the waiting room to the seated girl. She reached up to take his hand and squeeze it hard with the hand that was not holding the stained gauze. I found myself wondering how badly her face was damaged underneath it. Undoubtedly Karl was wondering the same thing, and telling himself firmly that it didn’t matter, since it was her beautiful soul that he loved, anyway.

“Thank you, Baron Stjernhjelm,” I said. “I appreciate the token of faith. Now, in return, I’m going to instruct Joel to come out where you can see him, and put his gun away. That gives you a chance to wipe out both of us if you can shoot fast enough and feel so inclined. If not, I suggest you step well forward, turning to cover us if you wish, but giving us room to withdraw peacefully together, right out this door. Deal?”

I heard him laugh shortly. “If you can imitate an honorable gentleman, Mr. Helm, who am I to do less?” As Joel came into sight, hands empty, I felt a sudden weight in my right-hand overcoat pocket, and realized that Olaf had given me back my silenced pistol—well, the agency’s silenced pistol. That didn’t mean, of course, that he didn’t have a weapon of his own; but it was still a respectable gesture of confidence. He said, “Now I will walk past you and out into the room where your man can kill me… It is too bad that we are on opposite sides in this, Cousin. We seem to think along similar lines.”

I said, “Hell, I still don’t even know what the sides are, let alone who’s on which one… Come on, Joel, let’s blow the joint.”

Leaving, I had a last glimpse of Astrid Watrous watching us go, her brown eyes grave in her pale face. Karin Segerby awaited us in the corridor.

“Olaf said you wished me to accompany you,” she said.

“I think it’s time for you to get out of this, don’t you?”

She hesitated. “Very well. I come with you.”